Climate Change

Tackling the tough questions regarding what we know, and don’t know, about climate science.
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Dietary Guidelines Committee ignores climate change

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. His previous article on BNC was: Feeding the billions on a hotter planet (Part III).

He also wrote a brilliant recent piece for The Punch: Fukushima was no disaster, no matter how you spin it

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IPCC calls to reduce meat consumption

Back in 2008, head of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri told the world to eat less meat because of its large greenhouse footprint.

At about the same time the National Health and Medical Research Council appointed a committee to update Australia’s Dietary Guidelines … last issued in 2003. The preface from the 2003 document is clear:

“The Australian Food and Nutrition Policy is based on the principles of good nutrition, ecological sustainability and equity. This third edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults is consistent with these principles. The food system must be economically viable and the quality and integrity of the environment must be maintained. In this context, among the important considerations are conservation of scarce resources such as topsoil, water and fossil fuel energy and problems such as salinity.”

The Terms of Reference give no instructions about what the committee should do other than to update the documents with the best available science. Environmental issues were clearly worthy of lip-service in 2003, if nothing else. Any reasonable update to the 2003 document should see those issues front and center.

Our impacts on the climate will flow on into most other environmental issues, whether we are concerned with other species, or more narrowly focused on the habitability of the planet for our own. If food choices have a significant impact on climate forcings, then documenting and explaining the extent of those impacts to the public should have been front and centre in the workings of this committee. In addition to the head of the IPCC, no lesser scientific authority than NASA climate scientist James Hansen said in 2009:

If you eat further down on the food chain rather than animals, which have produced many greenhouse gases, and used much energy in the process of growing that meat, you can actually make a bigger contribution in that way than just about anything. So that, in terms of individual action, is perhaps the best thing you can do.

He made an equivalent statement to me in 2008 and advised that he was changing his own diet and was “80-90% vegetarian“.

We shall see later that Hansen’s claim is easily supported.
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Purpose and target audience of BraveNewClimate.com

Before I write a scientific paper, I always try to identify: (1) my main message [MM], in 25 words or less, and (2) my target audience [TA]. Doing this helps focus the ‘story’ of the manuscript on a key point. Papers that try to present multiple messages are typically confusing and/or too long for busy researchers to read. It also dictates the background and specialist terminology that the reader might be safely assumed to understand, as well as guiding the choice of journal that I will submit to. For instance, a paper written for Nature requires more general context setting than one sent to Wildlife Research.

However, it occurred to me that I’ve never tried to define the main message of the BraveNewClimate.com blog, nor really reflected on who the chief audience is. So let’s try.

In reality, both have evolved over time. Back in late 2008 – early 2009, when the blog (and my thinking on climate change policy) was in its infancy, it would have read something this:

2009 MM: Communicate the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming to the general public and policy makers, and advocate the need for, and urgency of, effective mitigation.

2009 TA: People seeking understanding of past climate change, current/future impacts, and the basis of modelled forecasts – all explained in relatively straightforward terms. A secondary target audience was those who were confused by, or enamored of, the repeated assertions of ‘the sceptics’.

Although I was proud to have developed the website on this scientific and philosophical foundation, neither of the above MM or TA are appropriate to BNC’s central purpose in 2012. So let’s try again.

2012 MM: To advocate an evidence-based approach to eliminating global fossil fuel emissions, based on a pragmatic and rational mix of nuclear and other low-carbon energy sources.

2012 TA: Environmentalists who disregard or oppose nuclear energy, and instead believe that renewables are sufficient (or that continuing to rely on fossil fuels is a rational energy policy).

The main message changed because I became progressively more interested in educating people on practical solutions to the problems of global change, rather than preaching doom-and-gloom. This shift in purpose was not because I don’t still consider the impacts of climate change to be incredibly serious and the evidence (ever increasingly) compelling — I do! It’s rather that I found the generic message of: “This is really bad, we must do something!” to be ineffectual, unappealing, and frankly, depressing. Besides, there are other sites that do this very well, so I now tend to leave it in their capable hands.

Instead, I became interested (okay, obsessed is a better word) with grasping and communicating the high-level issues associated with which low-carbon energy solutions will work most effectively at displacing fossil fuels and thus ‘solving’ climate change, at scale, in time, and within reasonable costs.

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2011 on Brave New Climate

So the year 2011 draws to a close. What a tumultuous year it was, particularly for nuclear energy! For climate change, alas, the freight train just keeps gathering steam.

For 2012, I will expect the unexpected, but also hope to see some better signs of progress towards the downfall of fossil fuels. But really, let’s be honest, that is a decadal rather than year prospect.

Anyway, to the BNC year in review. Below I list some of the most read, most commented and most stimulating or controversial subjects of the past BNC year.

1. Fukushima nuclear crisis: This was the biggest story of the year for the blog. Read about the early diagnosis and explanation, ongoing reports, some technical speculation, an essay on what we can and can’t design for, preliminary and considered lessons learned, what the INES 7 rating means, and the need to avoid radiophobia with some common sense (and data). Another highlight is Ben Heard in his pre-decarbonisesa.com days…

2. Renewables in the context of effective CO2 abatement. Some useful analyses on CO2 avoidance cost with wind, climatologist James Hansen admonishes use to get real about how effective (or ineffective) green energy has been to date at displacing fossil fuels, an adventure to energy debates in wonderland, a look at geographical smoothing, an argument that an energy strategy without nuclear does not have history on its side, Geoff Russell deconstructs the situation for India and Switzerland, and I do so for Germany.

3. More depressing climate trends. Sea ice declines and emissions rise, the cost of climate extremes, complications and realities, a plea to clean up the climate ‘debate’, why the argument of ‘no recent warming’ is statistically invalid, and a graphical review of the grim numbers. Continue reading →

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CO2 is a trace gas, but what does that mean?

Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and most other long-lived greenhouse gases (i.e., barring short-lived water vapour), are considered ‘trace gases’ because their concentration in the atmosphere is so low. For instance, at a current level of 389 parts per million, CO2 represents just 0.0389% of the air, by volume. Tiny isn’t it? How could such a small amount of gas possibly be important?

This issue is often raised by media commentators like Alan Jones, Howard Sattler, Gary Hardgrave and others, when arguing that fossil fuel emissions are irrelevant for climate change. For instance, check out the Media Watch ABC TV story (11 minute video and transcript) called “Balancing a hot debate“.

I’ve seen lots of analogies drawn, in an attempt to explain the importance of trace greenhouse gases. One common one is to point out that a tiny amount of cynanide, if ingested, will kill you. Sometimes a little of a substance can have a big impact. But actually, there’s a better way to get people to understand, and that’s to follow one of the guiding principles of this blog: “Show me the numbers!“.

In response to a recent post by John Cook on George Pell, religion and climate change, commenter Glenn Tamblyn pointed out an interesting fact: Every cubic metre of air contains roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of CO2. In scientific notation, this is 1022 — a rather large number.

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Feeding the billions in 2050’s sauna (Part I)

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. His previous article on BNC was: The Swiss army nuclear knife

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During the past few years, all the world’s major science journals have had a steady stream of papers on the challenge of feeding 9 to 10 billion people on a warming planet in 2050. They have been joined by reports from bodies with varying prestige and influence likeInternational Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), The World Bank and the Royal Society. CSIRO has a long history of interest in the issue and even billionaire packager Anthony Pratt is getting in on the act telling Australia that since it can produce food for 200 million people, it has a responsibility to do so.

All these reports pay swollen lip service to the food security issues of the poor. All rightly regard the current global levels of stunting and malnutrition … running at 30 percent or more in many poor populations … as unconscionable.

Do we simply need more of the same?

Most of these papers and reports fall into two groups. The first looks at population and food intake trends and guesstimates that adding 2 to 3 billion people by 2050 will require between 70 percent and 100 percent more food. They typically then suggest places where large buckets of money might be deposited to fund research directed at meeting these projections.

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